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Lake Victoria
- Location & Contact Information
- Address: Olive Street South Beloit IL USA 61080
- Telephone Number: +
- Official Website: []
- Overview
Lake Victoria or Victoria Nyanza (also known as Ukerewe and Nalubaale) is one of the African Great Lakes.Lake Victoria is 68800km2 in size, making it the continent's largest lake, the largest tropical lake in the world, and the second widest fresh water lake in the worldin terms of surface area (third largest if one considers largest freshwater lake by volume, containing 2,750 cubic kilometers (2.2 million River Nile, the White Nile, and has a water catchment area of 184,000 square kilometeres (71,040 sq mi). It is a biological hotspot with great biodiversity. The lake lies within an elevated plateau in the western part of Africa's Great Rift Valley and is subject to territorial administration by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. The lake has a shoreline of 3,440km (2,138 mi), and has more than 3,000 islands, many of which are inhabited. These include the Ssese Islands in Uganda, a large group of islands in the northwest of the lake that are becoming a popular destination for tourists.Lake Victoria is relatively young; its current basin formed only 400,000 years ago, when westward-flowing rivers were dammed by an upthrown crustal block. The lake's shallowness, limited river inflow, and large surface area relative to its volume make it vulnerable to climate changes; cores taken from its bottom show that Lake Victoria has dried up completely three times since it formed.Reader, p. 228 These drying cycles are probably related to past ice ages, which are times when precipitation declined globally. The lake last dried out 17,300 years ago, and filled again beginning 14,700 years ago; the fantastic adaptive radiation of its native cichlids has taken place in the short period of time since then.[1]
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